Distro idea

"Brian Hawkins" <brianhks at activeclickweb.com> writes:
>> OK I've ranted long enough, here is my solution. Change the package manager
> to install everything under one directory. For example if I were to install
> Postgres on my system it would create a directory /programs/postgres82/ and
> put the program there. In the program directory it would create a /usr /var
> /bin or whatever it needed for the application to install. The package
> manager would also install whatever dependencies it required in the same
> location. Think of it as doing a chroot before installing the program and
> it's dependencies. I Then change the loader to look in the local program
> directory for libraries before it goes to the system wide directories.
This is, coincidence or not, more or less how Mac OS X applications
are distributed, except there's no package manager. An application
bundle is a special kind of directory that contains all the resources,
libraries, etc. that an application needs. You just throw it wherever
you'd like on your filesystem, and if you want to get rid of it, you
just kill the bundle and it's all gone. No need to track dependencies
since they're included.
I believe there was, at one point, a Linux-based OS that did something
similar, but I don't remember the details right now and couldn't find
it with a quick search. Maybe someone else will know what I'm talking
about.
--Levi